NCAA Sports Blog

The NCAA Women’s Division I Championship is an annual basketball tournament for women. Held each April, the Women’s Championship was inaugurated in the 1981-82 season. Attendance and interest have grown over the years, especially since 2003, when the final championship game was moved to the Tuesday following the Monday men’s championship game. The women’s championship game is now the final overall game of the college basketball season.

The tournament bracket is made up of champions from each Division I conference, which receive automatic bids. The remaining slots are at-large bids, with teams chosen by an NCAA selection committee. The selection process and tournament seedings are based on several factors, including team rankings, win-loss records and Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) data.

Unlike the men’s tournament, there are only 33 at-large bids, and no play-in game. The women’s tournament, like the men’s, is staged in a single elimination format, and is part of the media and public frenzy known colloquially as “March Madness”. It is one of the most followed sporting events in the United States.

All 63 games have been broadcast on television since 2003 on ESPN and ESPN2. Similar to men’s tournament coverage on CBS, local teams are shown on each channel when available, with “whip-around” coverage designed to showcase the most competitive contests in the rest of the country.

Tournament format

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A total of 64 teams qualify for the tournament played in March and April. Thirty of the teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. Because the Ivy League does not conduct a postseason tournament, the regular-season conference champion receives an automatic bid. The remaining teams are granted “at-large” bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.

The tournament is split into four regions, and each region has teams seeded 1-16, with the committee making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The best team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, and so on.

Since 2003, the tournament has used the so-called “pod” system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. (In 2003 and 2004, there were 16 sites.) These sites are chosen in advance and are generally locations where there is significant interest in women’s college basketball. Arenas are generally on college campuses, in contrast to the large professional sports arenas often used in the men’s tournament.

Before the 2003 tournament, the top four teams in each region would host their quarter of the bracket at their home arena. The women’s sites, though chosen in advance, are not necessarily neutral; the women’s tournament committee deliberately places host teams on their home floors when possible, even if their seeds are low. For instance, in 2006, 10th-seeded Old Dominion University played on its home court, and in 2004, 11th-seeded UC Santa Barbara and Temple and 12th-seeded Montana and New Mexico played on their home court despite being the low seed. (It should be noted that the home court advantage for the lower seeded teams only worked for UCSB, as the other four teams lost in the first round.) This practice mirrors earlier years of the men’s tournament. Once the event gained enough popularity, the practice of playing on one’s home court was banned. The move to eight sites instead of 16 is designed to reduce the number of teams playing on their home court, and make it easier to televise the tournament.

The women’s basketball championship originally began as a function of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. In 1982, the NCAA began its tournament, which resulted in the AIAW dissolving.

* 1982-1985: 32 teams

* 1986-1988: 40 teams

* 1989-1993: 48 teams

* 1994-present: 64 teams

Prior to 1996, seeding was conducted on a regional basis. The top teams (eight in the 32-, 40-, and 48-team format, 16 in the 64-team format) were ranked and seeded on a national basis. The remaining teams were then seeded based on their geographic region and teams were moved outside of its geographic region only if necessary to balance the bracket, or if the proximity of an opponent outside of its region would be comparable and a better competitive matchup would result. In 1993, the teams below seed #4 were explicitly unseeded. The regional seeding resumed in 1994. In 1996, seeds were placed on a national basis using an “S-Curve” format similar to the process used in selecting the field for the men’s tournament.

Selection process

For more details on this topic, see NCAA basketball tournament selection process.

A special selection committee appointed by the NCAA determines which 64 teams will enter the tournament, and where they will be seeded and placed in the bracket. Because of the automatic bids, only 33 teams (the at-large bids) rely on the selection committee to secure them a spot in the tournament.

Women’s Division I basketball champions